The Fundamental Blog

In John 15, Jesus tells us that as long as we remain in unity with Him, that we may, “…ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” Now some people would like to take this verse and bend it to mean that we have carte-blanch to absolutely anything we could dream of, but it’s not true. “But wait a minute! The Bible tells us that the reason we don’t receive is because we don’t ask, but even when we do ask, there are many times when we don’t get what we are asking for, in fact sometimes we get just the opposite!” Since the Father never does anything contrary to His will, it can only mean that, “IF,” it’s glorifying to Christ, and, “IF,” it is within His will, then He will not withhold from us anything we ask. But what do we ask for? What should we be asking for?

We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, that’s a good start. But that’s mainly an internal mechanism. In Matthew 28:19, we are told to, “…go and make disciples of all nations…” God’s will for our lives is to make disciples! Is this what we pray for when we are before the throne? I’m sure that many of us have prayed that a loved one would hear the call of God and be saved by a transforming faith in Christ Jesus, perhaps some of us have even seen that prayer answered. When we are blessed enough to see one of the lost come to the cross in repentance, receive the gift of God’s grace in salvation; that’s a good day! But are we willing to be the ones that stick our necks out to try to help bring someone to Christ? Even within our own families this can be a tricky maneuver, we risk alienating the people closest to us, but these are the very same people that we should want to see saved more than anyone, simply because they are the ones closest to us.

From this perspective, our prayer should be that God grants us the power to lead. We need not be the best speakers or orators of sound doctrine, Moses himself, proclaimed to be slow of speech, but God willed that he should be His chosen tool to deliver Israel out of Egypt. All we need do is tell our stories to people explaining that we used to struggle with these-or-those life issues, then we came to know Christ and now we see those things differently and they are no longer the huge burdens that we used to think they were. We are to sow seed! If God has willed that the person to whom we are talking should have ears to hear, then they will.

The story I had heard was this: A circuit preacher delivered the message with great conviction one day, and years later, when re-visiting that church, a woman came up and thanked him for leading her to the cross and introducing her to Jesus. He asked her, “When you get to Heaven, will you come find me, take my hand, walk with me to Jesus and tell Him what you just told me?” Will we have anyone in Heaven to take our hands and tell Jesus that they are there because we set them the example? Because we shared a testimony with them? Because we walked them to the cross?

Usually we waste our time praying for things that God won’t give us. He knows that if He let us hit the lottery that it would draw us farther away from Him and that is not what His will is for us. He wants us closer to him. He could take a particular pain away from us but He would rather use it to see if we won’t come closer to Him instead. We need to understand that oftentimes when we ask for one thing, the only way to give us the thing we ask for is to put us through the very thing that we are hoping to avoid! We want patience; He sends trials. Sometimes the thing that we think we want is only produced by enduring that same thing. If a person wants desperately to beat a chocolate addiction, He may give them a job in a candy factory!

There was a time when I was sure that I never wanted children. It was a long time ago, and I’ve grown and changed since then, but back then I knew that I never wanted children of my own. God’s will for me was that I learn the lessons that can only be learned by having a child in the house and WHAM… I was a parent. It amazed even me, that I went from a person who didn’t want to be bothered with rug-rats to a grown man, on all fours, trying to teach an infant to crawl, (something that I wished hadn’t happened almost as soon as he was able to do it, by the way!). I was transformed from someone who was interested in cars and motorcycles to someone who became enthralled with making wooden toys and child-sized furniture in the garage at Christmas!

We are too easily distracted by asking for the things that we think will do us the most good from our limited human perspectives instead of asking for the things of eternal value. We know the Bible’s direction to store up for ourselves treasure in Heaven, but we still ask for the things that we count as treasure here on earth. The things we pray for must be within the will of God if we are to expect that He will give them to us. The country singer, Garth Brooks, has a song with the line, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.” Well, I believe that God answers every single prayer so I would say that I thank God for saying no, to a bunch of mine.

When the Bible tells us that we receive not because we ask not, we need to realize that God’s will is implicit in that. It is telling us that we do not receive God’s will, because we don’t ask for God’s will. The text in John 15 goes on to say that, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit…” What is our fruit? God’s will displayed in our lives! What is God’s will displayed in our lives? Disciples! If God, through us, convicts others and they become Christ’s disciples than God is glorified and that is the best possible fruit we could hope to display; that is the will of God in our lives.

We do not need to be seminary theologians, or Bible college graduates to be effective tools in the hands of God. God has shown, time and time again, that He chooses the weak to confound the strong; the simple to confound the wise. God will use the most unlikely of people to perform the greatest of His accomplishments. It is because of this, that the world can see that there must be more at work than whatever appears to be on the surface. Who was Gideon that God should have chosen him? Gideon told the Lord, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family?” Gideon was the least likely tool that God could have picked to defeat the Midianites, and His answer to Gideon? “I will be with you.”

When God grows a new disciple He ensures that the soil is nourishing enough to supply the seed, He sends the rain to water the seed, He causes the seed to sprout and grow by His own power. All we need to do is drop the seed. God will do all the rest. Christian, think of your own conversion. If you look over the events that brought you to accept Jesus you will undoubtedly see God working throughout the entire process. There was only a very small part that someone else did to bring you to the point of conversion, and it could be argued that even that, was really God working through that particular someone.

If we want our lives to be glorifying to God then we need to be bearing much fruit. I can think of no better way to bear good fruit than by learning to pray in God’s will. If we do this, then we can expect to see a dramatic increase in the fulfillment of our prayer requests. By understanding that we rarely see God’s best for ourselves, we can begin to understand that there are good reasons that God does not give us the silly things we ask for. We could pray for world peace but how can God’s Word be fulfilled unless there are wars and rumors of wars? This is a fallen world and it is not yet the time for the world to rest in peace. He can not give us things that violate His will, or His Word. His will is that we make disciples. In the making of the disciples, we are doing little more than showing how the will of God is focused on the things which are always…


All for the Glory of Christ

Sometimes, like today, I sit in front of the keyboard and look at the blank page staring back at me and say, “Lord, fill this page. I need You to give me the words.” Sometimes I can begin by force-writing, that’s when you start writing anything, and everything, that comes to mind until a direction emerges and the next thing you know, it begins to look like a column. But this is not a force written beginning, just a bit of explanation of how my process sometimes works. This is a more intentional beginning, I think I know where my topic is and how to reach it. The Lord was gracious to me by bringing to mind something I heard earlier in the day on a radio program.

I usually listen to talk radio when I’m driving and that means I am looking for either NPR or Christian talk. Today I found a stretch of road where I was able to hear, “Family Life Today.” It was a show about things to consider when a suitor is calling on your daughter and how to help your child in the decision of whether or not this potential beau is, “THE,” one. As their guest, Dennis and the guys had Voddie Baucham Jr. They were discussing Voddie’s new book, What He Must Be if He Wants to Marry My Daughter. As interesting as the discussion was, I was struck by a statement that Voddie’s uncle made to him as a young man. His uncle told him, “If you do not know the purpose of something, you will eventually abuse it.”

This statement has a far reaching impact on so many different areas of life. It applies to the purpose of tools, the purpose of our spouses, the purpose of our lives and the purpose of our very faith. I’m sure that you can think of many other areas where you could apply this statement as well. So I came to sit at the keyboard this afternoon, not knowing what to write when it occurred to me that I may be missing the boat in the way I try to come up with a column for this space. Do I really understand the purpose for this column in the first place? You would think that the one who began this Blog would surely have that much on the ball, wouldn’t you? I was sitting here thinking, “What can I write that will interest my readers, what can I say to them that they might need to hear?” I was blank!

There are several things wrong with that approach, did you pick any of them out? This is not about keeping you interested or filling a perceived need that you might have. Don’t get me wrong, when that happens, and I hope that it does, it is a wonderful blessing from above, but it can’t be the reason for doing what I do here. Another thing is that I, the one who started this Blog, really am not He who started it, at all. Just as no one can come unto the Son but that the Father has called them, neither is this a work of mine but rather, the work of He who laid it upon me to reach out to any who might hear. The One who started this Blog is the One that is to be glorified through it and it is to Him that I stand or fall.

So what is it that God, Himself, would have written here? That’s a tough one! I dare not assume the role of prophet and claim to have any special revelation but there are, I believe, some things of which He might wish to have us all be certain. The truth of His Word is the fundamental foundation upon which all else must be built. Looking over the past articles in the archives, I can see some that I feel were truly inspired and others that are a bit too topical, along with one or two that I think were just filling space that week. I am coming to you in a confession of sorts that I long to do better, I desire that Christ be brought through the words I write each week and that the person who reads them is afterward, better able to find themselves in Christ as a result.

With the first advent of Christ on this earth the message from God is fully completed. God spoke to and through the prophets of old and when He came in human flesh to bear witness to Himself there was little left to say. God has given us all that is necessary for us to know through His Word, that is, the prophets, the words of Christ and the inspired Epistles. When I hear of modern day preachers claiming that they have received a, “New Revelation,” from God about this or that, I ask, “What did God forget to tell us Himself?” But that does not necessarily mean that there is nothing left to discuss. We have been left with the instructions to encourage one another, to help one another, to bear one another’s burdens and to be the light of the world by proclaiming that which we have already received.

That is the goal of my part in writing this Blog. Have you been abused in a church relationship? I have as well. Have you struggled with pieces of the theological puzzle that didn’t seem to make sense? So have I. Do you wish there was a place to have things explained by someone, or a group of some one’s, who will not think less of you because you are not at the same place in your Christian walk of faith as they are; That’s what I had intended this space to be all about. There is not a single one of us, from the A.W. Tozers and the Billy Grahams to the guys holding signs reading, “Will Work for Food,” that has all the answers. There are some who have progressed much further in their walks than others, and THANK GOD for that! Were it not for those pillars of the faith, our learning task would be much more difficult than it is. If any of us know that Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world, then we are bound to share that good news with anyone who would hear it, but if we don’t know why He had to do it that way, then we are bound by our duty to Christ, by way of the Great Commission, to seek out the answers through prayer and from those who can help us.

I am NOT saying that I am that person. There is plenty that I don’t know, or though I may know it, may not be able to adequately explain to some one else. If I am helpful to you in anything, PRAISE GOD! If I am a stumbling block to any, I need to know so that I can correct myself and help pick up any who have stumbled. Discipleship is a two-way street, a give and take, a shared experience of the Holy Spirit working within us to conform us to the likeness of Christ. Proverbs 27:17 reads, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” That is us! We are to sharpen each other so that our witness for Christ can be as effective and deeply assured within us as is possible.

Do not be afraid of entering into a discussion that might be over your head, that’s how we become better. When I first became convinced of the truth of God in eternal life through Christ Jesus, I was eager to tell anyone who would stand still, the truth I had found; but I didn’t have the knowledge to be convincing as far as why I was sure it was true. These were some of my best experiences because the purest silver comes from the fires of the forge of testing. The first thing I learned was that there is no shame in saying, “I don’t know, let me get back to you about that.” The next thing I realized was that through the research I had to do to make a particular point viable in a discussion, I found myself being driven deeper and deeper into God’s Word; always a good thing! I knew that just because I hadn’t yet learned the answer to a specific question, didn’t mean that there wasn’t one.

This brings us back to the right purpose of things. People who do not understand the purpose of Christianity do eventually abuse it. Some for monetary gain, others to lord their superiority over the less learned. So what is the right purpose? Salvation? To earn our way through the pearly gates? Absolutely NOT! The assurance of eternal life through faith in Christ is a benefit that we are allow to receive as a result of our faith but the purpose is beyond Heaven. The purpose of the Christian faith is that God has reconciled us to Himself, erased the curse of fallen sinfulness, that He may be glorified through us and we can be useful to Him in reaching others by His will. That’s the job. It’s a job with a really good benefits package, but we can never think that the benefits are the reason for the life we live in Christ.

Luke 10:2-3 contains the marching orders, “He, [Jesus], told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.’” The more I strain, the more I pour myself into the writing I offer to you, the less effective it is. This is not about me, it is not about you, this, (if it is to have any good effect at all), is about building up the kingdom of God and about being true to the grace He has given to me, (far more than I deserve, I assure you). I am committing myself to do better and to try to keep myself out of God’s way as these columns come to you. This is not about trying to find the right things to say that will tickle your ears or amuse you; this is about humbling myself before the Lord and being obedient in the thing that pleases Him most, and that is why I always end with the simple, yet prayerful phrase, that all that is done here, is…


All for the Glory of Christ